Mystery continues to surround the EgyptAir flight which crashed into the Mediterranean as investigators reveal a preliminary report will take another month.

The head of the Egyptian investigation team, Ayman al-Moqadem, reportedly said it will take four weeks for information to be compiled and published.

It comes after French investigators, who are assisting the official inquiry, offered the first clues as to what unfolded in the moments before the aircraft crashed into the sea with 66 people on board.

A spokesman for France's BEA air accident investigation agency said the jet sent a series of warnings, indicating that smoke had been detected on board before it disappeared off radar screens.

He added that the signals did not indicate what caused the smoke or fire on board the plane, which was heading from Paris to Cairo in the early hours of Thursday.

EgyptAir crash debris has been posted on Facebook by the Egyptian military

Egyptian military posted these pictures of debris they claim to have found (Image: Egypt Army)

One aviation source said that a fire on board would likely have generated multiple warning signals, while a sudden explosion may not have generated any - though officials stress that no scenario, including explosion, is being ruled out.

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"Ramadan, the month ofconquest. Get prepared...so that you make it a month of calamity on the non-believers anywhere," said the message posted on Twitter accounts that usually publish Islamic State statements.

Egypt said its navy had found human remains, wreckage and the personal belongings of passengers floating in the Mediterranean about 290 km (180 miles) north of Alexandria.

The army published pictures on Saturday on its official Facebook page of the recovered items, which included blue and white debris with EgyptAir markings, seat fabric with designs in the airline's colours, and a yellow lifejacket.

Analysis of the debris and recovery of the plane's twin flight recorders are likely to be key to determining the cause of the crash.

Civil Aviation Minister Sherif Fathi told reporters an additional challenge in the hunt for the black boxes was the depth of the Mediterranean in the area under search.

"What I understand is that it is 3,000 (metres)," he said.

That would place the black box locator beacons, which last for 30 days, on the edge of their detectable range from the surface based on the type of acoustic equipment typically used during the first stages of a search, according to a report into the 2009 crash of an Air France jet in the Atlantic.

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"No important devices from the plane have been retrieved so far," Fathi said.

The flight data transmitted before the crash was sent through an automatic system called the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS), which routinely downloads maintenance and fault data to the airline operator.

Aviation Herald, a respected Austria-based website specialising in air accidents, first published a burst of seven messages broadcast over the space of three minutes.

These included alarms about smoke in the lavatory as well as the aircraft's avionics area, which sits under the cockpit.

Richard Osman, with his wife Aurelie, who was on board the doomed flight when it crashed (Image: Athena)

The plane left Paris on Wednesday night but disappeared off the radar on Thursday morning

While suggesting a possible fire, the relatively short sequence of data gives no insight into pilot efforts to control the aircraft, nor does it show whether it fell in one piece or disintegrated in mid-air, two aviation safety experts said.

The aircraft was carrying 56 passengers, including a child and two infants, and 10 crew.

They included 30 Egyptian and 15 French nationals, along with citizens of 10 other countries.

Egyptair said officials met family members and told them the process of gathering body parts and information would take time, while DNA testing to identify victims would require weeks.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, who met relatives of crash victims in Paris on Saturday, said there were several possible causes.

"At this very moment all scenarios are being examined and none is being given greater emphasis," he said.

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France sent a plane and navy ship to help the search, centred on an area just south of where the signal from the plane was lost early on Thursday.

EgyptAir Chairman Safwat Moslem said the radius of the search zone was 40 nautical miles, but could be expanded.

The radius is equivalent to an area of 5,000 square miles (17,000 square km), the same expanse covered in the initial hunt for the Air France jet in 2009.

The large area reflects the fact that neither jet could be accounted for in the last few minutes of flying time.

A European satellite spotted a 2 km-long oil slick in the Mediterranean, about 40 km (20 nautical miles) southeast of the aircraft's last known position, the European Space Agency said.